Systems for automatically reading meters from a mobile device such as a van using wireless communications are well-known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,119,948, issued as early as October 1978, describes a remote meter reading system, which, although not making explicit mention of mobile reading of meters, does mention remotely reading a meter using transponders.
Further, mobile AMR (automated meter reading) systems have been available as a product and been in wide use in the utility industry for many years, if not decades. For example, the Itron Mobile Collection System (MCS), supplied by Itron, Inc. of Spokane, Wash., is a well-known product in the industry.
All such systems are limited to simply collecting the meter data. The techniques used for collecting the meter data vary. In the conventional “wake-up” or “bubble-up” techniques the meters either periodically broadcast the data and the mobile data collector device simply grabs the readings as it passes by or the mobile device continually broadcasts a wake-up tone, upon hearing which the meters wake up and transmit their meter data. In more recent point-to-point communication techniques, the mobile data collector device communicates with individual meter device in turn and obtains the meter reading. The order in which the meter devices are read can be sequential according some pre-determined route or it can be optimized based on various parameters, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,109,882.